UbiCast MediaServer Moodle activity plugin

Copyright: UbiCast (https://www.ubicast.eu) License: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU GPL v3 or later

Description:

This Moodle activity module allows users to add media or channels from a UbiCast MediaServer in their courses.

This Moodle plugin is required for other UbiCast plugins (Atto button and Block plugin).

Dependencies:

• Moodle >= 3.0 with mod_lti (external tool).
• A UbiCast MediaServer web site (version >= 8.1). Visit https://www.ubicast.eu/en/solutions/delivery/ to ask for a trial.
• Cookies must be allowed for the MediaServer web site (see note below).

Important note about cookies:

In order to make the LTI authentication work, MediaServer needs cookies usage. If your MediaServer is using a domain totally different from your Moodle domain, cookies will probably get blocked by browsers because they will be classified as third party cookies. To avoid MediaServer cookies to be considered as third party cookies, we recommend to use a sub domain for MediaServer using the same top domain as the Moodle site (for example, if your Moodle uses moodle.yourdomain.com as domain, you can use mediaserver.yourdomain.com as MediaServer domain). It is also possible to allow third party cookies usage in the browser settings.

Installation:

If you have installed this plugin when it was called "mod_easycastms", please follow this procedure to keep your data: rename the module to mod_ubicast

Follow the standard moodle procedure to install the module. You can install it from the official Moodle plugins repository or using this git repository.

To use the git repository, clone it in your mod dir:

cd "moodle/mod"
git clone "https://github.com/UbiCastTeam/moodle-mod_ubicast" ubicast

Once installed, go to the plugin settings in Moodle (usually, Plugins > Activity modules > UbiCast MediaServer plugin):

Set the MediaServer URL, LTI key and LTI secret to use in the plugin settings:

You can find these in the Mediaserver LTI settings (in the authentication settings section):

Usage:

Once configured, a new activity type is now available in Moodle:

This allows the user to import media he has access to in MediaServer:

When clicking on "Select a media" the user gets to choose easily from the media he has access to:

That's it, content is now integrated in the Moodle course:

• Professor view

• Student view

About rights management

The permissions on embedded media are customizable in MediaServer in the LTI settings page. By default, the student role has the permission to access media and the teacher role has the permission to access and edit media.

The media selection shows media for which the user is set as the speaker.

Development environment

Clone the following repositories in a folder:

• https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-docker
• https://github.com/UbiCastTeam/moodle-mod_ubicast
• Get latest version of the moodle source code at: https://download.moodle.org/ or clone https://github.com/moodle/moodle

Then follow the steps given into moodle-docker's readme.

After that, follow the steps above for installation.

In moodle, the plugin will be copied to mod/ubicast, so to work on it, you can do it right away in there.

How does the LTI Video integration work?

This is highly inspired from the way moodle does it in the external tool.

We integrate an iframe in our course, which points to the launch.php file of the plugin.

That page is returning a "self submitting" form (transforming therefore a GET request into a POST) towards the MediaServer LTI url of the Media (ex: https://yourname.ubicast.tv/lti/v125acedf1dfedeojhk0/) with all the needed parameters (oauth, roles, etc...).

This allows MediaServer to know the identity of the moodle user, and give the corresponding access on the media (student, teacher, etc...).